


Pass the Salt

by CeslaToil



Series: Fiddleford Appreciation Month [3]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Angst, Drama, Marriage, Other, Reunions, tense family dinners
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-29
Updated: 2017-03-29
Packaged: 2018-10-12 17:46:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10496298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CeslaToil/pseuds/CeslaToil
Summary: Fiddleford McGucket is cordially invited to a night of fun and games at Easter dinner.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Shout out to the works of Edward Albee.
> 
> I came up with this story after hearing a few people wanted to see more interactions between Fiddleford and his Wife. Enjoy :)

“Pa, quit sticking yer head out the window before you get hit by a bus.”

Embarrassed, Fiddleford McGucket suppressed the canine instinct that had come over him and sat back down in the rental car at his son’s command. He couldn’t help it. Though he had regained a great many of his memories, McGucket could not recall the last time he’d ever been to the beach, and as they were traveling down the road towards their seaside destination, he was overcome with excitement. It was a lovely, golden spring day, and the ocean was still and shining as they drove past. There was still a chill in the spring air that would forbid swimming in its waters, but it was beautiful to him all the same.

Tate, however, had formed his mouth into a solemn gash across his already stony face. He was concentrating on the road, which, thankfully, wasn’t too congested with traffic since it was still the off season, but it’s hard to drive when so much is weighing on the mind.

“It was awful nice of yer Ma to invite me to Easter dinner,” said McGucket, still bouncing up and down in his seat. He was currently fiddling with the potted lilies he had brought for the occasion. He couldn’t remember if his ex-wife enjoyed flowers or not, but lilies always seemed to brighten up the rooms in his new mansion. How could anyone dislike lilies?

“Now Pa,” said Tate, gripping the steering wheel tightly as he chose his next words carefully, “I should warn ya before we go in, Mom remarried a couple of years back now—you sure you’re gonna be fine with that?”

“Aw, Tater Tot,” said McGucket, flashing his snaggletooth smile at his gloomy son,

“I don’t mind none; I remarried loads of times after she called it quits on me.”

“Pa,” said Tate, rolling his eyes as they drew nearer to a secluded house by the beach, “being married to your beard ain’t really being married at all.”

“I know that,” said the old man playfully, “Why’d ya think yer Ma and me split up in the first place?”

“Pa!”

“Tate!”

“Look—I’m glad you’re in a good mood,” said Tate, who turned up the lane towards the beach house with growing trepidation, “But I still want you to brace yourself, for your own sake.”

“Yikes, yer makin’ it sound like some big, scary musclehead’s gonna beat me up the second I walk in the door,” said McGucket, who’s knees began to bounce together out of nervous habit. “Is that what yer tellin’ me? That yer Ma got hitched to some muscle-bound lug and he’s gonna beat me up?”

“I can promise you this, Pa,” said Tate, who in spite of himself was beginning to crack a hesitant, friendly smile as they finally pulled up to the house, “Ma doesn’t have a giant muscle-bound lug who’s going to beat you up.”

The beach house was painted a cheerful, sunny yellow with sea foam green shutters lining the windows, and a comfortable porch with wicker patio furniture on the deck. Sitting on one of these wicker chairs was a woman, though her hair had turned gray and her face still lined with faint wrinkles, she had a youthful quality about her, from the way she smiled at both Fiddleford and Tate when they got out of the car, to the way she jumped down from the porch and practically tackled Tate into a bear hug.

“Baby Tate,” she cried; if she’d had the strength she would have picked him up and twirled him around like a baby doll,

“So glad you could make it!” When she broke away, she shot McGucket a beaming smile, and grabbed him by the hand, shaking it firmly.

“It’s so nice to finally meet you too, Fiddleford,” she said with a wink, “I’ve heard tons from Tate, and from the Missis of course. Carla McCorkle."

McGucket squinted at Carla for a moment, as if trying to read very fine print from a long distance, but, after spotting the ring on Carla’s left hand and the sheepish grimace on Tate’s face, the truth hit him all at once and he let out a barking laugh.

“So you’re the big guy who’s gonna beat me up,” said McGucket, now shaking Carla’s hand in earnest.

“Tate, what stories have you been telling your father,” Carla chastised the younger McGucket man, “It’s not nice to fib on Easter, you know!”

“I ain’t told him nothing,” said Tate defensively.

“Well, let’s get you two inside,” said Carla, waving her hand theatrically towards the beach house. “It’s been chilly all week, and dinner should be ready in about an hour. I’ve got some wine and cheese set up in the living room, you two make yourselves comfy while I get your bags.”

 

The living room was airy and comfortable, and on the glass coffee table stood a tray of different cheeses, fruits and bread. McGucket grabbed a few handfuls of everything, but a look from Tate told him not to stuff the snacks into his face like he had wanted to initially. It was difficult to control his hunger, the smell of chicken frying wafted in temptingly from the kitchen, and the scent of cinnamon and apple was detected as well. Even if he was a little nervous about meeting his ex wife again after all these years, the promise of good, filling food always makes things a little easier to face.

A fluffy, white cat crept into the room; its wide, squashed in face kept it from achieving true beauty. McGucket knelt down and held out his hand to the tiny creature; she took one look and swatted her paw at him, grazing his hand with her claws.

“Ouch!”

“Lovelace doesn’t take kindly to strangers,” said a voice behind McGucket; he turned to see a woman, her graying brown hair shaggy as always as she scowled at him in that old familiar way he was starting to remember. She wore a dirty apron over her outfit, a heather gray sweater and brown corduroy pants, her arms crossed over her chest as she examined McGucket from across the room, pursing her lips as she did so.

McGucket's ex-wife was a quiet, secretive sort of person, to the point where I, the narrator, hardly know much about her. I don’t, for example, have a clear idea what her face looks like, having only ever seen a rough sketch of a thirty-year-old photograph of her in Stanford Pines’ third journal. I don’t quite know what her voice sounded like, what perfume she liked to wear, what sort of jokes made her laugh (or, for that matter, if any jokes made her laugh at all), and, I’m embarrassed to admit, I don’t even have a record of her full name. I only know that she was once Mrs. McGucket, and now she’s a Mrs. McCorkle. However, since that name applies to two completely different women in this tale, I have elected to call Mrs. McCorkle-Who-Was-Once-Mrs.-McGucket the much less trying to type “Trudy” instead.

“Well, howdy,” said McGucket, giving his ex a smile she couldn’t return. He got up to scoop her into a tight hug. She had gone stiff in his arms, so he let go early.

“You, ah… you look nice. Pretty house,” said McGucket awkwardly. Trudy said nothing, and merely turned her attention to her son.

“How was the drive,” she asked quietly.

“Easy enough,” said Tate, who shared his mother’s dislike of talking too much. Silence filled the room like heavy smog, and the three McGuckets simply stared at each other, unable to really say anything at all. It was to everyone’s immense relief when Carla came back in holding the potted Easter lilies in her arms.

“Fiddleford, did you bring these?” she asked happily, “They’re beautiful!”

“I grew ‘em in the garden,” said McGucket, the grin returning to his face as he took the lilies from her, “sprouted up once it started getting warmer again. I reckon you’d like to have them!”  
He offered the flowers to Trudy, whose scowl only got deeper.

“Lilies,” she explained, “are highly toxic to cats.”

“Oh,” said McGucket, who hadn’t realized this at all. “I’m sorry! Didn’t know ya had a cat when we came to visit! I apologize.”

“You should,” said Trudy, eyeing the flowers resentfully as she bent down to pet her cat, “Even just the pollen could cause Lovelace immense harm if she were to breathe it in or ingest it. Though I guess with all the money you’ve made off of your death robots, I could just send the vet bills to you.”

“Trudy,” hissed Carla, who knew to cut her wife off quickly when she went into these sort of moods, “It was a simple mistake. We’ll just keep the flowers outside; Lovelace is an indoor cat, she won’t even see them.”

Trudy gave them each an unreadable expression.

“I have to get back to fixing dinner,” she said, turning away from them as she did so. “It’ll be up in about an hour.”

With that, she was gone.

 

The first five minutes into dinner, no one said a word. Tate was never a very talkative person to begin with, and both Carla and Fidds tucked into their dishes in earnest. Trudy, for her part, only picked at her plate, staring dully at her ex husband as he consumed the meal she’d prepared.

“So,” said Fidds, still chewing on a fried chicken leg, “How’d you two meet?”

“Oh, it was actually just a few years back,” said Carla brightly; she grabbed Trudy’s hand and squeezed it gently as she spoke. “I was in a production of _Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf_ off Broadway—I played Martha, just the most fascinatingly devious role—and one night after curtain call, I get back to my dressing room and find a bouquet of roses from a mysterious admirer!”

“What can I say,” Trudy shrugged, a phantom of a smile briefly appearing on her gloomy face, “I always had an eye out for the great performers.”

“Oh? Since when,” said McGucket, puzzled.

“Since always,” huffed Trudy petulantly.  
Carla coughed uncomfortably before continuing her story.

“Anyway,” she said, picking at her salad nervously, “I kept getting roses night after night, until one matinee performance I catch her in the act! I ask her out right then and there, I tell her, ‘no way in heck am I accepting roses from a complete stranger,’ and then, one thing lead to another, and here we are today!”

Trudy blushed; she took Carla’s hand and gave it a quick, affectionate smooch.

“And she’s quite a sweetheart when you prod her out of her shell a bit,” said Carla brightly.

“Well ain’t that just lovely,” said Fiddleford, raising his chicken leg in a sort of toast to the happy couple, “I think I should probably start going to plays if I ever wanna meet somebody as special as you!”

Trudy apparently did laugh at this, a cruel, mirthless laugh that sounded like an icicle through the throat.

“…Why’s that funny,” said McGucket quietly.

“…Nothing,” mumbled Trudy, who began to guzzle down her glass of wine.

Tate spoke up, “This salad is fantastic mom, where did you—”

“No, why is that funny,” Fiddleford insisted, his voice uncharacteristically aggressive.

Trudy finished her glass of blood-red wine in one gulp.

“You at a play,” she said disdainfully, “Come on Fiddleford, don’t kid yourself, theater is for the sophisticated and the refined, you’d stick out like a farm hand shopping at Barney’s.”

Fiddleford glared at her from across the table, a look she returned with tundra-like cruelty. He looked down miserably at his plate, unsure if he could enjoy another bite.

“Now, really Trudy,” chastised Carla, “You’ve been married to me long enough to know that sort of snobbery should have no place in the fine arts. Theater should be accessible to everyone, charging the sort of money they do for tickets nowadays is just robbing the common people one of the greatest joys in life.”

Carla patted Fiddleford on the arm affectionately. “You and Tate should come see a show with us while you’re here! I’ve got some good tickets to see _Kinky Boots_ , and I think you’d get a huge kick out of that show.”

“I ain’t much for singing and dancing,” mumbled Tate, who was giving his mother an icy glare.

“Tate, d’you mind passing the salt for me,” said McGucket, not looking up from his plate. Tate took the saltshaker from the middle of the table and handed it to his father, who began to sprinkle it onto his chicken absentmindedly as Carla continued to chatter absentmindedly about other musicals.

“You’re going to over season the chicken,” snapped Trudy suddenly. Ugly silence fell across the table like a crashed jet engine.

Slowly, Fiddleford spoke up, “well dear, you’ll forgive me I hope, but you hardly used any spice when frying up this bird. It just tastes like plain flour, I just thought I’d liven him up with a little salt.”

“There’s nothing wrong with my chicken!” Trudy gritted her teeth together as if she’d like nothing better than to sink them into her ex’s throat, severing an artery.

“Just as there ain’t nothing wrong with me putting a little salt on him. You never were much good at putting spice on things, sweetheart,” said McGucket, sprinkling even more salt onto his plate.

“You’re lucky I even let you eat at all, you filthy bum!” Trudy was standing now; she slammed her fists onto the table violently, rattling the silver wear and glasses upon impact.

“Now really,” said Carla, mortified. “We don’t need to argue like children over dinner—”

“Well,” said McGucket, his voice trembling, “I guess I definitely had worse dinners than this, I did spend thirty years living out on the streets; I don’t know if’n ya ever had to eat garbage out of the can before, it’s really an unforgettable taste!”

“ _You’re_ the one who left,” Trudy snarled.

“ _You_ told me to go,” McGucket retorted. Faintly, he remembered a difficult conversation in the back of his mind-- _Think about what sounds better: spending time with your best friend working on a subject you both love, or staying in the suburbs playing house with a wife you have nothing in common with but your son?_

“Did I tell you to not write or call for months on end,” Trudy gesticulated wildly at her Ex as she spoke, “Did I tell you not to visit your son?”

“Mom, leave me out of it!” cried Tate, slamming his fist on the table as well.

“Oh,” Trudy continued, not paying a bit of mind to her son at all, “I guess I’m the one who made you send that robot after me when I served you the divorce papers because I was just so done with your—”

“You left me to die on the _street!_ ”

Fiddleford had never said this out loud, hadn’t even dared to think it, but had kept this thought buried away in his heart for a long time, hoping it would rot away into nothing. Tate drank from his cup deeply, a guilty glint in his eyes as silence fell over the table again.

Trudy took Carla’s glass of wine and hurled the contents into Fiddleford’s face. He sat there, dripping wet with wine that stained his beard like blood.

“Trudy!" cried Carla, horrified.

“ _Get out_ ,” hissed Trudy at her ex husband, “Get the hell out of my house right now!”

McGucket scrambled out of the dining room and ran into the night, his eyes stinging from the mixture of wine and tears as he ran.

 

We like stories because, like magic wardrobes and hidden portals, they take us to a version of reality we want to exist. A place where the lines between gentle, good hearted people and nasty, cruel people are thick and easy to see, where morals can be cut up and fed to us in easy to digest little bites, where all is well and right by the end, wickedness is defeated and kindness is rewarded as it deserves.

In this story, however, there is no wickedness to be defeated, as nobody in this story is truly wicked. Yes, Trudy McCorkle was cold and hostile to McGucket, and she wasn’t without her own small burden of blame, but she had her reasons and resentments that lead to her unhappiness with her ex-husband, something he would come to agree with in time. Forgiveness is a long process that takes a different amount of time for everyone, and Trudy’s time simply hadn’t arrived.

Fiddleford turned over these angry, mixed up thoughts as he fell into a fitful slumber on the shores of Glass Shard Beach. The moon was as gibbous and milky as a blinded eye in the sky above; it seemed to stare down coldly at Fiddleford as he tried to sleep. He didn’t know why he’d thought visiting his ex-wife was a good idea. He should have just stayed home and not bothered people who didn’t want him in their lives again.

“Pa!”

Tate was running towards him from further down the beach.

“There you are,” said Tate, panting as he sat down next to his father, who had curled into a tight ball in the sand.

“Come on, Dad, let’s get out of here.”

“No, it’s fine,” said Fiddleford, obviously not fine at all, “I’ll just stay here in the dirt. Your Ma’d be happier if I stayed out of her way.”

“I don’t give a crap about what’d make her happy right now,” snapped Tate, “That was—that was inexcusable. I told her that she ought to be thanking you for saving everyone last year, and that she was acting like a jackass.”

“Tate,” cried Fiddleford, popping out of the sand at this, “Don’t go saying such things to your mother!”

“But she—”

“What we’re arguing about ain’t something we should be dragging you into,” said Fiddleford, “and I’m sorry if that ever got taken out on you, Tater Tot.” He gave his son a hug, squeezing him tight.

“Pa, really, I’m a grown man.”

“Hush, you ain’t too old for hugs.”

“Anyway,” said Tate, pulling away from his dad, “Just… look, Carla’s real upset how everything went down. She wants to make it up for what happened. Did… did you wanna go see a play with us?”

“… You sure I won’t embarrass ya none,” Fiddleford asked quietly.

“I think we got all the embarrassment out of the way tonight,” said Tate, who, alongside his father began to walk down the beach towards the boardwalk. “Come on—if we move now, Carla says we can rush into the theater.”

Real life is often chaotic; but there is some comfort in getting to spend a moment away from that chaos, especially if it’s with the people you care about.


End file.
